Eastern Canadian church-planting tip: Get a carnival on wheels.
Paul McKee, Derek Jones, Charlie Wright, and Jim Tranquilla meet to hand over the block party trailer that the Spartanburg County Baptist Network donated to the East Coast Baptist Association in Nova Scotia for evangelism and church-planting ministries.Like the one Spartanburg County Baptist Network just donated to the East Coast Baptist Association in Nova Scotia: a 6-by-12-foot trailer outfitted with a popcorn machine, snow cone machine, kids’ bouncy house, generator, gas grill, coolers, and other assorted paraphernalia more often associated with the county fair than evangelistic outreach.
Such a unit – a “block party trailer,” in evangelical parlance – is a crowd magnet, kid pleaser, and tone-setter for conversations that may very well make their way around to the topic of Jesus. With it, volunteers from South Carolina and local Canadian churches hope to introduce Jesus, in a real and lasting way, to the vastly under-reached people of Nova Scotia.
Spartanburg Network volunteers had taken one of their trailers to Nova Scotia last year, and when Paul McKee, missions ministries consultant for the network, saw how much the Canadian believers loved it and could use it, he returned home praying for God to provide a unit for them.
“I prayed and thought and did a little research into the cost,” McKee said, “and as I was doing all of this, a dear lady in my church called me one day and said she wanted to tithe off of what her husband left her when he died, and she asked me could I find a use for $7,500? Well, the unit was about $8,000. I said to her, ‘You bet I can find a use for it!’ “
Inside the trailer, a popcorn machine, snow cone machine, coolers, generators, and other items help create a “county fair” atmosphere wherever the trailer goes.Block parties, construction (new and renovation), backyard Bible clubs, prayerwalking, community surveys, Canada Day celebrations – all are tools employed in the partnership “South Carolina Baptists: A Witness to the World,” between the South Carolina Baptist Convention and Baptists in Nova Scotia. Through the partnership, Canadian Baptists hope to see at least 50 new churches among the 1 million people of Nova Scotia.
Dozens of South Carolina Baptist churches have utilized all of these tools so far in this new North American missions partnership; this marks the third summer the Spartanburg County Network has sent volunteers to the area, with about 130 people planning to participate this year.
“We’ve had youth and senior adults, including an 82-year-old, and this year some families are going,” said McKee. “It’s been great for our folks. We’ve developed some wonderful friendships with people in the churches there.”
And they have also seen several professions of faith, including an 8-year-old boy at a Vacation Bible School, who approached a volunteer on Wednesday evening of VBS and said, “All week long you’ve been talking about this Jesus. When are you going to give me a chance to let him into my heart?”
Delighted, volunteers helped the boy, only to be chastised by his mother the following evening, who wanted to know “what was all this talk about Jesus?” said McKee. When the Canadian volunteer reminded the mother the camp was called Bible school, the mother reluctantly relented, but hoped that “maybe this will just blow over.”
“A lot of them don’t really believe in God, and parents don’t know about Jesus, so they don’t pass it on to their children,” he said. “The first year, when we had about 33 children at a backyard Bible club, we asked how many of them had heard of Jesus. Two raised their hands.”
Nonetheless, “for the most part, people are pretty open – well, at least to hear a Southerner’s accent,” he said.
Whatever the reason Canadians listen, McKee and dozens of other volunteers from the Palmetto State are more than happy to talk about Jesus. In a region where less than 3 percent of the population is evangelical, that conversation, and churches born out of it, can multiply like corn kernels in a popcorn machine in a block-party trailer. – SCBC